Now that Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine has instructed lawmakers to choose a different method, local prosecutors are taking offense to the governor’s “unofficial moratorium” on capital punishment in the state.

DeWine last week said it’s “pretty clear” there won’t be any executions in 2021, and he doesn’t think there is enough support in the Legislature to prioritize a switch in the execution method.

Ohio has an “unofficial moratorium” on capital punishment, DeWine said. Yet some states and the federal government have managed to successfully execute inmates this year.

According to figures provided by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction, six executions were scheduled in Ohio for 2021. Right now there are eight people on death row from Trumbull County cases, and three from Mahoning County cases.

Mahoning County Prosecutor Paul Gains said he hopes the governor and the lawmakers can get together and fix this problem so that capital punishment can resume.

“They’ve got to straighten this out somehow,” Gains said, adding that the governor’s action will not make him stop prosecuting capital cases if the facts warrant it. “A moratorium does not mean that we cannot go for the death penalty in court.”

Gains and his staff are dealing with a new capital murder case. Kimonie D. Bryant, 24, of Struthers, faces aggravated murder in the shooting death of 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney. Bryant has pleaded not guilty.

Three Mahoning County inmates now sit on Ohio’s death row.

Gains’ counterpart in Trumbull County, Prosecutor Dennis Watkins, said he hopes the moratorium can be lifted for the sake of victims’ families. They “are left twisting in the wind,” he said.

“We have great respect for the work done by the governor when he was attorney general in fighting for the death penalty in the Danny Lee Hill case,” Watkins said. “We also realize that it’s been difficult to get drugs because of the effort to block executions from happening.”

He added: “Until the state legislature repeals it (the death penalty), elected officials need to enforce the law.”

VICTIM IMPACT

Watkins and longtime victims’ advocate Miriam Fife remember a time when a former Ohio governor worked hard to find a way to execute a Trumbull County inmate.

Fife’s son was killed by Hill, who has been fighting his death sentence for three decades. When she was the county’s victim advocate as part of Watkins’ staff, she saw firsthand how former Gov. Ted Strickland secured the necessary drug to execute Kenneth Biros.

Biros, who died Dec. 8, 2009, was the first condemned person to be executed by lethal injection in the U.S. with the use of a single drug — the anesthetic sodium thiopental, Watkins noted. Biros was convicted in the early 1990s of the brutal murder of 22-year-old Tami Engstrom, whose body parts were found strewn across two counties.

“The victim’s mother was dying and I remember holding her hand when she got the call from the governor,” Fife said. “She needed to see justice done before her death, and she begged Gov Strickland — who didn’t believe in the death penalty — to work endlessly to find a drug to get it done.”

Fife said like Strickland, who followed the law despite his feelings, DeWine needs to consider the victims’ families — like herself — when making these life-or-death decisions.

“I would like to see him fight to find a good and humane drug, like the other states and the federal government do,” she said.

Watkins said if a “good drug” can’t be found, Ohio should look at alternative methods, such as nitrogen hypoxia, firing squad or electrocution. He realizes that because of the COVID-19 pandemic, any efforts to find new methods will take time.

DeWine said he still supports capital punishment as Ohio law. But he has come to question its value since the days as a legislator, he helped write the state’s current law — enacted in 1981 — because of the long delays between crime and punishment.

Watkins, who has seen three Trumbull County inmates (Biros, Jason Getsy and Roderick Davie) executed since 2009, said that long delay can be taken care of by lessening the appeal process.

DeWine called himself “much more skeptical about whether it meets the criteria that was certainly in my mind when I voted for the death penalty. …” DeWine said his moral justification for the vote was that capital punishment did in fact deter crime.

EXECUTIONS IN 2020

According to the Death Penalty Information Center website, some 17 inmates were executed by state or federal governments so far in 2020. Another Pentobarbital execution took place Friday for Louisiana truck driver Alfred Bourgeois who killed and tortured his 2-year-old daughter.

That drug figured in the death of 15 of the 2020 executions, according to the website deathpenaltyinfo.org

The exceptions: On March 5, 2020, Alabama put to death 43-year-old triple murderer Nathaniel Woods with a three-drug mix including Midazolam. Fourteen days earlier, Tennessee put to death Nicholas Todd Sutton, 58, by the electric chair.

Ohio’s last execution was on July 18, 2018, when Robert Van Hook was put to death for killing David Self in Cincinnati in 1985. Ohio’s other neighbors — Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Indiana, haven’t had executions since 1999, 2008 and 2009 respectively.

According to the website, executions are rare or nonexistent in more than two-thirds of the nation. Thirty-four out of 50 states have either abolished or have not carried out an execution in at least 10 years. An additional five states have not had an execution in at least five years. Two additional jurisdictions (the District of Columbia and the military) have not had an execution in at least 10 years.

Michigan and West Virginia have had long-term moratoriums. The state up north abolished the death penalty in 1846, while West Virginia took that step in 1965.